Notes

Autism is a condition that affects both men and women. However, studies have shown that on average five times as many men are diagnosed with autism than women amongst the general public. Similarly, in 2009, a study by Brugha found that of the adults surveyed, 1.8% of the men had an Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) yet only 0.2% of women were affected.

These differences have been dominant in research for many years, beginning with Hans Asperger in 1944 who originally thought that no women or girls at all were affected by the syndrome he described.

But why is this the case? Does autism really affect more men than women? There’s no straightforward answer and research is continually being done to find out more and to see if there really is a link between gender and autism.

Why are Fewer Women Diagnosed with Autism?

Despite there being no clear-cut reason why women are less likely to be affected by autism than men, research presents us with a number of ideas that could help us to understand why women with the condition are less likely to be diagnosed:

– Research and surveys are often focussed around the male characteristics of autism. To this date there is no research that focusses specifically on autistic women, largely because the condition is seen as more common in boys than girls, and so boys are routinely only included in research projects. The National Autistic Society says that because of the male gender bias, women are less likely to be diagnosed with the condition, even if their symptoms are equally as severe.

– The diagnostic criteria for Asperger Syndrome are based on the characteristic of males. During childhood boys are often more disruptive than girls, meaning that they’re more likely to receive attention. However, this can lead to girls going un-noticed as their behavioural characteristics are seen to be less of a problem that needs investigating.

– Females with autism are better at masking their symptoms. In general, girls are more skilled at fitting in with their peers and those with autism may try to repress their behaviour so that they don’t stand out. Not only does this lead to symptoms not being spotted but it can also cause mental health issues or cause the girl to ‘act out’ and ‘let go’ once they get home.

– The signs and symptoms of autism amongst girls are less severe. A study from the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore suggested that, whilst for boys the average age of diagnosis is three, the average age for girls is four or older. This has been attributed to girls exhibiting less severe symptoms – perhaps because they’re repressing their behaviour or because it’s socially acceptable for girls to be ‘quiet’.

– The ‘special interests’ of autistic women are more socially acceptable. Autistic boys often develop strong interests in unusual subjects, like the inner workings of machinery, train timetables or dinosaurs. Autistic girls, on the other hand, commonly develop strong interests in things that are more typical of girls their age, such as books, dolls or celebrities. It’s likely that the autistic girl’s interest will be more intensified but it’s much more likely to go un-noticed.

– Females are protected against autism by their genes. In 2000, a study by David H Skuse suggested that the genes for autism are located on the X chromosome. Girls inherit X chromosomes from both their parents yet boys only inherit one from their mothers. It’s thought that the singular chromosome inherited by girls contains an imprinted gene which ‘protects’ them from developing autism.

How Does Autism Present Itself Differently in Women?

Through an accumulation of research, surveys and assumptions it appears that women are under-diagnosed when it comes to autism. It’s been suggested on numerous occasions that the behavioural characteristics of autistic women vary greatly compared to those of autistic men, but how exactly do they differ?

A recent research project into gender and autism suggested that the female autistic profile is only just emerging. In the report, the authors propose that autistic women (compared to their autistic male counterparts) exhibit the following behaviours:

Increased social imitation skills,

A desire to interact directly with others,

A tendency to be shy or passive,

Better imagination,

Better linguistic abilities developmentally, and

Interests that focus on animals or people.

Some of the behaviours exhibited by autistic women are positive, as seen in this list, whilst others are negative like those often displayed by autistic boys, but it’s important that you look out for them all if you are to truly recognise that a girl needs to receive a diagnosis.

Autistic Female Behaviours

Additionally, autistic females may display the following behaviours:

Autistic females tend to be more aware of the need to socialise. Even if they lack the skills to interact, autistic girls often copy what their peers do and mimic the skills needed for social interaction. Autistic girls often won’t initiate social contact but can quite easily ‘go through the motions’ of how they’re expected to behave.

Autistic females tend to use their words carefully. Rather than making meaningless comments, autistic girls will use their words with purpose and will not use small talk to initiate communication.

Autistic females often create an elaborate fantasy world. Much like an autistic boy would develop strong, specialist interests, an autistic girl may develop a vivid imaginary world or take great joy in escaping into fiction.

Autistic females may have trouble understanding status. It’s common for autistic girls to misunderstand the social hierarchy and be unaware of how to communicate with people of different status. This can also cause girls to become anxious or hostile if they don’t understand why fellow peers are more popular than they are.

Autistic females are more likely to experience high rates of depression and anxiety. Beginning in their teenage years, there’s evidence to suggest that autistic girls commonly develop mental health issues, including depression, anxiety and eating disorders. Staff at eating disorder clinics in Birmingham recently discovered that 60-70% of the women in their twenties attending the clinic were undiagnosed autistic women.

Autistic females often have fewer friends. Particularly in their teenage years, autistic girls are often isolated or have fewer friends than other girls in their peer group. This is linked to the difficulty that autistic women experience with communication and interaction.

Autistic females find teenage life particularly stressful. Whilst any teenager can have trouble coping with their adolescent years, autistic girls are likely to struggle even more as they get to grips with their sexuality, relationships and puberty. These events can be challenging to understand and there’s unfortunately very little guidance out there to help.

In my opinion, we stayed far too long! After a couple of hours, no one had much more to say to each other. We stayed for a good four hours… till it closed.

And then it was too late to go anywhere for free, so we went for the place of one of them.

I confess I might had ‘high-hopes’ for the event, but to be brutally honest I felt those people met in the pub a couple of times and never really got in too many details about themselves…

I image it to be always the same t chit-chatting about the whether or recycling, trying to convince the other guy to pay you a drink.

The so-called ‘best mate’ it’s the guy that shows up once in a while to ‘fool’ everybody else on the latest overpriced ‘trip’, md’s, acid… Whatever he can ‘collect’ by the looks of it!

This is a proud creature and affirmed squatter that lives out of charity (and everything else he can get his hands on).

Another creature: the musician; it’s the type of guy that leaves the house wearing his £500.00+ coat but doesn’t take his wallet. Expects everybody to pay him a drink for the sake of his company.

The next alien is the technician of ‘nobody know what’! Him too have a problem of paying his own drink. And it’s the owner of the kitchen I’ve spent the rest of the night.

The only couple of apparently ‘normal'(whatever normal is…) guys, had a drink (both whatever they needed from ‘Mr. Trip’) and f..ed off!

Well, continuing….We went to the nearest off license to make the sad representation of: counting the brown coins between six grown up people in order to buy the cheapest bottle of bourbon. Yes, you read right ‘bottle’, one bottle! We’ve been in that counter for at least 20 minutes!

By that time I had give up!

Been the rest of night the autistic in the corner with her ‘joint’! (ops… did I say joint’, I meant roly:)

It wasn’t really a night out…

I don’t have money to spare! But I have enough to have a drink and pay a drink to my friend!

This people are not friends with each others.

I’m 40 Years old! I’ve stopped counting the brown coins! (at least most of the time, if I have to count them, it’s not to go out.)

You don’t count ‘brown coins’ among friend! If there is money, we drink. If there isn’t, we don’t!

All that show in the shop was ridiculous, everybody had money. They gave quit a few pounds to Mr Trip, 10 minutes before (to buy what they needed)…

You can perfectly see that they don’t want to show it or spend it with you…

I really don’t understand the point of it. But it makes me feel uncomfortable all that ‘misery’ without having a clue that misery really is.

I have, not many, but huge friends that I haven’t been with for some time. They are all different from each other, from different backgrounds, different ways of living and seeing the world. Some have difficulties others clearly don’t. But they are not miserable creatures.

They are my friends in the whole sense of the word. And they know what to be a friend really means. I’m sure that when we meet again it will be like we’ve never been apart.

All I can say is that I’m blessed! I realize how blessed I really am:(

‘GOD’ for Atheists (and an Expanded, Scientific Definition of God for Everyone Else)

As many celebrate the Christmas season and the coming of a New Year, maybe there’s a way we can, indeed, bring atheists and theists and the disparate factions and religions together on our little planet.

And, instead of focusing on the old definitions of “God”, that many reject, or on how differently we see and honor “God” across the many religions, maybe there is even a way to use this once divisive term to bring us all together.

I think it may be with this image, right here.

This is The Helix Nebula. It is also called “The Eye of God”.

As beautiful as it is, it is equally fascinating.

It is a vast expanse of gases from an exploded star, 700 light years away in the constellation Aquarius. And it is enormous! It’s radius, the distance from the center to the outer boundary, is 2.87 light years which is more than 16 Trillion miles.

More importantly, though, “The Eye of God”, like other nebulae, actually creates life. Yes, this, these massive aggregations of gases, create life… as well as stars and planets and virtually everything else in the physical Universe.

These nebulae are the nurseries of galaxies and solar systems and also contain the elements for plants and animals and humans to develop and thrive.

In other words, the atoms and molecules in our bones and heart and skin and brain… and everything around us… are created inside of these astronomical phenomena.

So, in a way of speaking, nebulae continue the work of what many regard as “The Almighty” in creating, and re-creating the Universe.

One way of thinking about this is that God created the physical universe 13.8 billion years ago with a flash of light called “The Big Bang.” Since the stars that God created generally only live 10 million – 10 billion years, the entire universe as we know it would have gone dark and died about four billion years ago… except for this AMAZING universal recycling system.

And what an extraordinary recycling system it is!

As the biggest stars in the universe run out of their nuclear fuel they actually explode — a sort of secondary (or tertiary, etc.) “Big Bang” and spew their guts billions of miles into the cosmos.

Over the next thousands and millions of years the elements from the insides of these exploded stars come together and form new elements and, eventually, form new stars and new planets.

So, God lives, and continues to create — endlessly — through nebulae. Here are some other spectacularly beautiful ones.

Crab Nebula

Orion Nebula

Ring Nebula

Twin Jet Nebula

Now that we are done with the science, how about utilizing these magnificent things that brought us together, literally and physically, to bring us together in other ways?

What if we added this scientific understanding to how we depict the “Creator”? What if we evolved and updated our definition of “GOD” by bowing to science (which if there is a “GOD”, he, she or it would have most certainly also created) and depicting “GOD” in a way that we now know is related to the actual, proven physical creation of stars, planets our own bodies and the universe itself?

Some of our ancestors had similar thoughts. They understood that God was too big a concept to try to squeeze into one word and so they put in a dash or an underscore between the G and the D, or left the “O” out entirely. That partially or completely empty space would communicate the unfathomability, the ineffability, the infinite nature of the Almighty.

And that is a beautiful and respectful way to honor God and I considered doing so in my recent book, E=MC2 and The New Definition of God.

But then I focused on this extraordinary image of The Helix Nebula. In lieu of the “O” I thought there might be an even more artistic AND scientific way to communicate the vastness of God and the Universe, and this 20th and 21st Century understanding about his process of creation and re-creation.

So, starting this Christmas season and with this New Year, I suggest that we begin to write the word in a new way… with a magnificent nebula as an integral part, like the image above.

This image, this way of writing this extraordinarily important and complex three letter word, applies to all of us. Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Baha’is, all indigenous religions and every other religion on the planet. Every single one of us, no matter our religion or belief in or about God was created by a nebula. Every single atom in our body comes from one. Nebulae bring together the many hot, excited, diverse elements of exploded stars and cosmic dust. Perhaps its imagery can bring its seven billion diverse creations here on Earth together as well.

So, it feels accurate, not to mention beautiful, whether you believe in some sort of Supreme Being, or not, to honor these mini-“Creators” that we can now actually see by putting them front and center in a new, scientific depiction of the word we use to denote “The” Creator as we try, as Albert Einstein said in his extraordinary “My Credo” in 1932, “to attempt humbly to grasp with (our) minds a mere image of the lofty structure of all that there is.”

(A fuller exploration of Einstein and a possible scientific definition of “God” can be found in the just released eBook, E=MC2 and The New Definition of God.

I’m a ‘visual creature’, so I’m going to use images that can best describe what I mean. I can make my point across easier that way.
At least I know I can get a few minds to follow my thoughts this way. Let’s put it this way… I will try to explain like I would the most simple and even childish way possible.

Let’s try to analyze the very autistic picture:

Being NT, the NeuroTypical minded and The Individual the Autistic. Of course that this is my own general picture of what each other see.

The Autistic:

The Not very autistic:

The Aspergers:

When it comes to Others*, I have a feeling that the NT are trying not to pay so must attention! For some obscure reason or simply because they have to admit that they don’t have a clue!